Category Archives: A life in the Spirit

Do we need simplicity skills?

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, , , , , , ,

Jonny Rashid often calls me a monk, which is more than a little bit true. It is very true that I admire the Christian radicals who created intentional communities in reaction to fellow-believers getting swallowed by the empire, and I admire how they multiplied monasteries when the Roman Empire fell apart. Believers gathered around Jesus and formed an amazingly creative response to the utter chaos and violence around them. They responded to their challenges with radical simplicity. As a result, their network of intentional communities preserved the truth about Jesus, provided a social safety net, and formed centers of creativity and charity that were rare points of light in Europe for hundreds of years. I think they flowered with Francis of Assisi. All the values that held the communities together: poverty, chastity, and obedience are extremely unpopular today. So people often ask the question, “Do we need to think about simplicity?”

Yes.

bucket_2017_04.jpg

You might like to start with my favorite movie: Brother Sun, Sister Moon. In this clip [link], Francis and his newly-minted band of monks are working in the fields outside Assisi and dealing with the new poverty they have chosen. I like the heart of what they are doing, especially the way Francis receives the bread he’s begged with radical gratitude. His single-minded focus turns the hot, impoverished day into worship.

I don’t know what you think of these monk people: scary maybe, from another planet, embarrassing, quaint. Regardless of how you feel about them, they are successfully working on being simple. God did not give it to me to be a monk, but it was given to me to be simple, same as the rest of us.

The heart of simplicity

To get started on disciplining ourselves for simplicity, we will one main thing. That is, we focus on Jesus and let everything else follow who we follow. Jesus said,

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy (or single), your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (see Matthew 6:19-24).

That is probably the key teaching on simplicity. Simplicity is about being basic, unclouded, whole. Simplicity is about being radically centered, not just frugal or generous. Simplicity is not mainly an economic matter. The pure in heart, the simple, the single-minded, will what they do from one reality: faithfulness to Jesus, no matter what their circumstance. That willingness is the character trait upon which simplicity skills are founded. Eternity is centered in our hearts so that reality gives our hands their focus.

We usually think of simplicity in terms of money. We are living in the United States, after all — and those people care about money! Not that everyone in the world isn’t pretty much obsessed with it, too, but Americans are schooled to see themselves as part of an “economy” and to see their consumer choice as an expression of their “freedom.” No matter how many times we are instructed that the president can’t really do all that much about the economy, the presidential election is going to be about jobs, when it should probably be about drones.

We need simplicity skills because our relationship with money (and with most everything else about us) is not so simple. We are at the center of a schedule that cannot be juggled properly; we are at the center of a communication system that overwhelms us — we can’t even figure out how to use the machines we have to use to run it; we are expected to be the center of an enterprise that sells our time, our communications, and our future — in terms of debt. The decisions we have to make are weighty.

Here are two ideas that I find important as part of my own simplicity skills for dealing with money. I wouldn’t say they are easy, but they are basic skills for using the tool of money in a radical way.

Be frugal. Budget with a vision. James 4:13-17

We should not construct our budgets as if our lives came from ourselves and as if the future were in our hands. This is basic Christianity. We say things like: “If I live, I live to the Lord. Whatever is at the heart of God, that is what I want in my heart.” I don’t think anyone writing the New Testament is sitting around waiting to find the perfect choice to make so they don’t mess up eternity. God can be trusted for the future. They are moving with the Spirit and focused on that one thing.

I have had the distinct pleasure of walking with people who are getting married this year. Some of them have already talked a lot about their finances and others almost not at all. Some are easy-going about how to organize their budget and assets and naturally want to share. Others are quite nervous about how sharing is going to work out and are naturally protective. Maybe that reflects how they first attached to mom and felt she was generous or withholding. Who knows? But how we handle our money as partners and as a community is important.

A basic simplicity skill is budgeting our money. We should know what we have, what we usually spend, what our goals are. We should not have to go to the ATM to find out what we have before we buy a snorkel for our vacation. We should not put it on the credit card and fix things up later. We should have a radical strategy for how we spend so our money is used for eternal purposes.

Be focused. Know when to kill the fatted calf. Luke 15:29-30

Throwing a lot of cash at an over-generous party might seem like the opposite of having a disciplined budget and being aware of how one is spending down one’s assets. If we did not live in eternity, scarcity would, indeed, be a huge  problem. If you kill the fatted calf too often, there isn’t another calf to eat! You know about the calf, right? If you are a subsistence farmer/cow raiser, the succulent meat of the cow you fed a special diet to plump it into shape is a very rare treat. You don’t eat it until you are celebrating the Eagles winning the Super Bowl, or your sister finally gets her BA.

Simplicity is also about knowing when it is time to kill the calf and celebrate. Simplicity is not all sweating in the field being poor. It is sharing our bread and praising God. Of course, some of us kill calves we don’t even own yet, hoping we will get some joy out of it — that is a little backward. The skill is to have the joy of eternity in our hearts and to celebrate it, not to celebrate in order to get some joy. We might see some joy looking backwards, but we get it by living forwards.

fatted calf | the classical beaver

Maybe we should all have a “fatted calf fund” as part of our budgets.  Some of us may be living under our means already, so we always have money with which to bless others. But some of us have not mastered money-making and spending yet, so we might need to deliberately put some money away for the time when we need to buy the piece of jewelry, or send someone on a trip, or take a friend to dinner, or buy a forty dollar piece of meat or  a wonderful carrot at Vedge. That’s radical budgeting, too.

I hope my two suggestions spur your imagination for how you can be simple in practical ways, in that you discipline your money, and other things, to move with Jesus in this wild world. One person told me, “Wow! Being simple is complex!” Well, I guess so. But the heart of all that disciplined living is simple. The main thing is being faithful to the Lord who is so single-mindedly devoted to us.

More Thoughts on Identity

Doing Theology, Psychological growth, , ,

Living or dead, we belong to the Lord (Romans 14:8). Our identity is in relation to God, not ourselves. This is the wisdom Paul proclaimed to his society (1 Cor. 1:30). These days, the society in which I live is having a similar debate about what is true. Much of the debate centers around the idea of sexual identity.

The well-known sociologist, Urie Bronfenbrenner, made a prophetic presentation in Philadelphia in 1973. In it he mused about the policy-makers’ reliance on “evidence” as opposed to wisdom. He complained that in child development studies the science of the child was usually based on the circumstances of the lab, not the natural ecology of the child. The application of the science then created a policy-driven ecology that was bereft of wisdom and even damaging to the child. When people asked him how to speak into such an environment, he had nothing to say because wisdom was not allowed. Policies about sexuality based on “identities” that are supposedly derived from “evidence” encourage a similar lack of wisdom.

These days, many people have learned a philosophy that is bent on finding the identity of things, as if we can reduce things, and even people, down to their essence and understand them. Christians and unbelievers alike all seem to follow this basic thinking; everyone is either “this” or “that.” As a result, most people are very interested in finding out, “What am I?” and being true to that. The modern enthusiasm for science encourages the process, and the post-modern emphasis on radical individual self-determination really encourages it. There is reason behind the development of this thinking, of course, but its application has become an oppressive law, locking people into the specious conclusion called “sexual identity.”  The scientists took our sexual expression into the lab and decided we could be homosexual or heterosexual, and everyone has had to find their place in that binary argument ever since.

I do not think there needs to be a heterosexual or homosexual identity, as if a person could be defined by their sexual desires or practices. It is a too-small way to see a person. God repeatedly tells us that we fallen-away-creations find our true identity, or self, or purpose, or destiny, in relationship to God, not in relation to ourselves or to another person or to our sexual impulses. A person’s primary identity is God-and-person, not merely a self-reflective definition.  DNA structure and brain wave activity are ways to define who we are; but we have a primary source of identity that is outside ourselves. I do not want to reduce a loved one to a “homosexual” or “heterosexual.” As Gore Vidal was fond of saying, “Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people.”

I am trying to move with how Jesus teaches us to develop a true self: “Those who want to save their lives will lose them, but those who lose their lives for me will save them. What good is it for you to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit your very self?” (Luke 9:24-5). The struggle with our bent sexuality, defined as hetero, homo, or however is too deep, too precious, too mysterious to reduce down to an application of a scientific formula, or a rationalistic definition. It is not enough. It must be handled in Christ.

I’ve decided not to bend the knee to the “Baal” of identity labeling in general, but surely with regard to sexual identity. While I may not be able to avoid the scrutiny and condemnation of the “civilization police,” who think equality under the law of the United States is freedom and think that such law must be spread universally, I still long for dialogue in grace that allows people to be on their own journey, facing the issues of intimacy with self-respect and the respect of others. I think Janelle Paris, in her book The End of Sexual Identity, has gone a long way to reframe the discussion so it is not just another divisive political argument, as if political dialogue is the only tool we have for gaining wisdom.  She says, “When disagreements about same-sex sexuality are just differences, not divisions, and when we share mutual affection and bestow honor on those with whom we disagree, we’re already living beyond the end of sexual identity.”

Reframing the question does not immediately make for good relationships with people who have already adopted the identity, of course. Since the seventies some people have achieved some freedom from societal oppression, much of which was based in the church’s teaching. At the same time, the rancor over the new definition caused an upheaval that hurt people and divided families and institutions. There are a lot of feelings being felt that cause a lot of conflict. Just writing this might cause some more conflict.

The other day at our training time, I shared some of my convictions to set the stage for the day’s discussion. I think we need to keep talking, even though it is frightening to do so for many of us. Here are three of the convictions I listed; I mean for them to add to the discussion, not end it:

1)  I want to maintain the complicated position of not having a policy about sexual identity. I don’t think God makes policies about people, or divides people up with labels — especially invented sexual labels. I would rather wait and see how someone’s life works out than be committed to a scientific/political label that became popular in the 20th century.

2) Besides, the labels are not always helpful or accurate. For instance, the UC Davis LGBT Resource Center now calls itself the LGBTQIA Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning/queer, intersex, and asexual center. The spectrum of how people express themselves sexually is varied and changeable. Our expanded interest in the spectrum is expanding how we see it. The labels are too small and end up being straitjackets.

3) The politics of sexual identity can be oppressive to many LGBT people. It often turns them into an anecdote that so-called heterosexual people tell to justify their righteousness. People are not their sexual ideas or behavior codified in law by the people who dominate society. The politics make so-called minorities pawns of the law, which only permits behavior, not wisdom, these days. We have a deeper law from God to sort out.

I hope we are open and affirming in a way that pleases the Lord, who is extravagantly welcoming. I think Jesus would like us to resist labels that exalt ourselves and diminish our identity in relation to Him (Matthew 23:8-12). Living or dead, we belong to the Lord (Romans 14:8). Our identity is in relation to God, not ourselves. This is a wisdom I want to proclaim, too.

Companion posts:

Identity and What the Idea is doing to Sexuality

The Language of Sexuality

Genesis 2: The Marriage Story

Doing Theology, Marriage and Family,

On Saturday we opened up the topic of marriage at our leadership training. There is a lot of change coming to fruit in U.S. society regarding marriage and the changes can be very confusing. Some of our confusion came to my attention when a cell asked me for a “private session” to talk about cohabitation and same sex marriage. When we had talked over some of their issues, one of them finally asked, “So Rod, what is marriage?” I’m not sure why the question surprised me, but it did. I realized we had some theologizing to do. Their thinking had been colonized by the philosophies of the age that did not recognize Jesus; they needed to talk. So let’s keep talking, here — gently. Arguing about intimacy and sex is never a good idea, in my opinion.

This is some of what I was saying on Saturday.

Understanding marriage starts with a story, not a definition.

Though U.S. laws and philosophies demand otherwise, any wisdom about marriage is going to start with a story; and it will be one about relating to God at the center of it. Some people connect with congregations of the Church and one of the first things they ask for is the congregation’s definitions surrounding sexuality to see whether it is tolerable. If that is you, I can only ask that you are patient with our Bible-like ways. If you ask Jesus, “What is marriage” he will probably tell you a story. Marriage is too mysterious and too full of God to reduce it to a definition one can control and fight about. U.S. society has no center, so it is in a constant fight about definitions that become laws. The kingdom of God just does not work like that.

Genesis 2 is a marriage story

Marriage of Adam and Eve. Jean Fouquet (1420-1481)

 

One of the first stories about marriage is in Genesis 2, where the Bible collects tales about the creation of the world. Among the many things that Genesis 2 is, it is a marriage story. I think we learn three things from it:

We are not alone in our garden, God is with us.

I suppose when God presented Adam with Eve, the man could have responded in other ways than with the wonder he expressed. He could have said, “What in the world is it?” Likewise, Eve could have whispered to God as they walked down the aisle of Eden, “Are you sure you know what you are doing?” Instead, Adam and Eve went with the miracle and trusted God for what was being created.

God expresses the Trinity’s character by creating us male and female in the Lord’s own image. Our coming together, is a mysterious, complete picture of who God is as we love one another as male and female. This is not the only way the image of God in us is revealed, because it happens when I love my children or comrades, too, and it happens when I choose to be my true self in the Spirit. Obviously, Jesus and Paul are not married and recommend their condition as a way to be married to God, so to speak. So people who are not married must not feel like they are missing out on the heart of the matter. But marriage is a basic way we creatures show how we are made in God’s image. The story of creation ends with marriage being the “moral” of the story: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). One of the basic reasons for the story was to explain why people get married and how God is with us in that.

Marriage is a primary way we come to our wholeness.

We all might know that in the story of Adam and Eve they get in quite a bit of trouble together. They make some choices that have some severe consequences. Their oldest children are not very well put together. I don’t think the whole clan has fully figured out how to be human for the first few chapters of the Bible, if then. In this process of sin and redemption, crime and wonder, marriage is a central crucible for growth. It is a laboratory for learning love. It is a crucible because it contains some volatile stuff that needs a gracious container to mature in. Many of us have blown up the lab a couple of times, and we know what I am talking about.

Yes, marriage is for romance and pleasure, but those elements are not enough motivation to sustain a love that can suffer like God’s. Personal satisfaction (whatever that moving target is!) is not enough to make a marriage worthwhile over time. If marriage is a practical process of learning  how to be a human who can be his or her true self in Christ, how to be a person who is able to come together in a kiss that is packed with mutual care, then we are getting somewhere.

Marriage is a primary way we fulfill our purpose

Some people think that Adam and Eve just wandered around in the garden hanging out, naming new animals and fruit they discovered. Not entirely. It says they were given the garden to “work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15). They were partners. They needed each other. Then sin made their work even harder! They were charged to be fruitful and cover the earth — have children, create community, keep the earth in shape, develop humankind. They had a whole earth to explore and tend and an eternity to do it. Their relationship had innate purpose. Just as God created them in a purposeful way, with love and goodness in mind, they were to be creative and purposeful.

Some of us have had relationships in which having the relationship was the goal of the relationship. Perhaps one partner was the avoider and one partner the pursuer — that often keeps couples occupied. Maybe both partners surprised themselves and their mate by discovering new issues they had with intimacy — that often gives people something to do. All relationships are challenging, but relationships with nothing else in life but the relationship are even more difficult. No person can be our “everything” – thanks for the confidence in me to think I could be, but no thanks. Being made for more than a relationship with your mate is not an either/or thing. Having a purpose should enhance intimacy.

How do I think community is created?

There is a lot to learn from the story. On Saturday, we began by thinking about what our parents’ marriages had been like. How did they bring us into creation? It makes a big difference to how we think we are to function in it. We are part of their ongoing story. If the family was eating forbidden fruit all day, it makes a difference.

If you are considering making a marriage covenant, are attached to a regular sexual partner, or are cohabiting, I think it is crucial to understand the story you are writing. When mating, Jesus followers probably want to match the creation/re-creation story in significant ways, since we are in the process of creating a new community with two people  at the center, and we are leading the community of the church in significant ways by what we do.

These days people tend to have

  • sealed off love (don’t connect too much) or
  • solace love (hang on for dear life), when what we want is
  • synchrony love (mutuality and understanding).

We tend not to know our own story too well, or to even think we should have one. We are more reaction than action. The marriage story in the creation story encourages good meditating. It causes us to consider how God is in everyone’s picture. It helps us make sensible choices in relation to others. Nice work, spiritual ancestors!

Do not be afraid

A life in the Spirit, , ,

This is my favorite Bible verse of the week. I think I will meditate on it with you again.

Therefore, this is what the Lord, the LORD Almighty, says: “My people who live in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrians, who beat you with a rod and lift up a club against you, as Egypt did.  — Isaiah 10:24

The whole nation of Israel was like God’s child. Israel was like a “son” to God (See Exodus 4:22 and Hosea 11:1). In this verse, Isaiah is speaking for the Lord, who is telling his children, the people of Israel, “Don’t be afraid of the Assyrians,” even though the Assyrian empire is huge and is undoubtedly going to take them over, and even though their king, Ahaz, is trying to make a deal with it instead of trusting God. Be faithful to God.

From a very fun video http://youtu.be/MyePSvvb4QQ

What moves me the most is that Isaiah, speaking for God, acknowledges the infant pain of the nation of Israel, which is now a grown-up nation facing a huge disaster. The Assyrians, who have their clubs lifted on the border are reminiscent of what the child nation experienced in Egypt. Isaiah notes that the experience of being beaten is installed in the nation’s memory, since that is what happened in Egypt when they were slaves. When they were just a child of a nation God rescued them from their abusive condition, but the fears born of having been in that condition are still real.

Pains of childhood

I love it when my psychological studies world and my faith world collide. The social scientists keep “discovering” what has been common sense for wise people throughout history. The pains of our childhood are the foundry that builds flaws into our future character as adults. The great task of a mature adult is to be conscious of our fears, among many things, and make choices to be our true selves. My understanding is that such choices are not fully possible without being reborn through the work of Jesus and having our birthright restored as a child of God. But I admire the psychologists, especially, who bravely dig into the reality that, “If I was beaten in Egypt, I will probably be afraid of being beaten again when the next oppressor raises his club.” The tripwires in our hearts are easy to set off and difficult to defuse.

When God tells his child, Israel, “Don’t be afraid,” the Lord knows they cannot just shut down their fear; it is installed deeply. He even inplants that understanding in Isaiah’s prophecy of impending doom. I find that very encouraging. Because it means that when God tells me, “Do not be afraid,” he must remember my beginnings, too. I have a story about why I am still afraid inside, even though I can act fearlessly in many ways. I have an “Egypt” in my past where I was hurt. I have huge empires bearing down on me too.

But God is with me! If I did not trust God, I would just have brilliant psychological reasoning to comfort me as I was beaten again. Or worse, I would just have an admonition to “Don’t be afraid,” when my distressing past is meeting my horrifying future.

So many Egypts!

As I was meditating on this verse, I could not help but remember many of the stories of “Egypt” I have heard lately. Several of them were stories of actual beatings! Some of us have stories we don’t even want to tell, they are so painful to recall. Some of us have stories we can’t tell because we can’t remember the traumatic experiences, we blocked them out so completely.

All of us have a story about how sin injured us. The stories were being formed when we were just a small human. There is no way God is telling us, “Don’t be afraid,” as if we were never in “Egypt!” He encourages us to not be afraid because we were in “Egypt” and we needed to be rescued. What’s more, we need help because the “Assyrians” are coming upon us.

Do not be afraid because God is with you. If you are bravely on your own in the face of the next gigantic power that is eager to consume you, God be with you. I think that kind of self-reliance is madness, but I admire your courage. Fear can generate a lot of energy. As for me, I am happy that God called me out of “Egypt” and is helping me face my “Assyrians.” God is with me.

Soak Up Generativity

A life in the Spirit, , , , , ,

At the memorial for Gwen’s mother, I read a portion of John 14 and this was part of it:

       If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
      Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
      Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?

Generativity is right before out eyes.

Does it also seem amazing to you that Philip and the rest of the disciples are often unable to see what is happening right before their eyes? Contrary to all the evidence, when Jesus tells them something, they want more evidence. I wish I could not relate to that.

I have experienced so many wonderful things in the past week that bubbled with generativity! They had the Father in them. They were like Jesus showing me the Father. God has been so evidently at work! Yet in each instance of joy and creativity there was a choice to make, because there was also a whisper of judgment and a way to see the situation otherwise. I saw Jesus. But he had to ask me, “Don’t you know me? Don’t you believe the Father is in me?”

List where you have been able to soak it up.

Maybe it is just me, but you might be going through similar challenges. So I thought I would encourage you to list where you have been able to soak up generativity. I make lists and I tell stories, 1) so I don’t lose track of my blessings in some morass of self-centeredness or self-condemnation, 2) so I don’t devalue God by ignoring grace. Today, I have a long obvious list. There were many moments last week that were pleasantly generative.

  • Touch. 1) When Michiko came up out of the water after her baptism, we spontaneously leaned in and touched our foreheads. 2) My grandson lolled on my lap for a good part of the Love Feast.
  • Retreat. I was away with the men last weekend. I had nothing to do but encourage and be encouraged, to soak up the Spirit and the energy of seekers.
  • Direct address. A person went out of their way to talk to me and not about me when they were worried about what I said. This is one of the most countercultural things Christians do.
  • Stories. The stone was repeatedly rolled away as people spoke at the baptism and the Love Feast.
  • Laughter. 1) The cooks at Cosi crashed their tools around so loudly when our cell was talking we could not stop laughing. 2) When Oliver and Nat were dancing on the ottoman to tunes from Beauty and the Beast, that was memorable.
  • Connection. Sixty or so children and State Representative Jordan Harris were at the building for a Childs Elementary art show. It was riotous and full of joy.

Don’t undermine your list, soak in it.

I think many of us gravitate toward seeing the dark side of most situations. A touch can feel painful. A retreat can feel lonely. A direct statement can be frightening. Stories can create envy. Laughter can seem like an interruption. Connecting can be tiring. We could have Jesus promising us eternity and need one more piece of evidence to feel good. Jesus could tell us he is going through death to bring us into life and we would be distressed he is dying. We are like this.

I say you should make your list and try not to even think about all the reasons your list is dishonest, tainted or troubling. Just soak in the generativity. If there is a drop of goodness coming your way, if you can see even a rivulet of grace flowing through the past week, let it reach you, get wet. I think we are in an ocean of God’s favor. It would make sense to take off the wet suit of fear, shame or whatever it is and feel it. This is me unzipping.

Narcissism and Telling Our Stories

Psychological growth, The Mission, , , , , , , , ,

My recent studies in psychoanalytic theory confirmed nicely what my first individual therapist, way-back-when, knew as soon as I sat down. At one point he handed me a book and said, “You might want to read this.” It was titled “Narcissism.” I take some small comfort in knowing that I am not alone in having my psychology organized in that way.

Many people say that the United States is a rather narcissistic society (notably Christopher Lasch). So I felt comfortable talking to the men about it when we were on retreat last weekend; we all know something about it, at some level.  Narcissists are often merely seen as people who are into themselves. But, in truth, what they are into is anything but themselves; they are more into the presentation of themselves – they are consumed by maintaining the image that keeps them safe from dealing with their shameful insides, the things they don’t want to touch or know about. They maintain their self-esteem by getting affirmation from outside themselves. So they can often be driven by repressed rage and self-hatred, and escape into a grandiose self-conception, merely using other people as instruments of gratification even while they crave their love and approval. Something is missing. If they ever ponder what is happening in their soul, they probably feel fraudulent and loveless.

Narcissism poster child

Tiger Woods became the poster child for narcissism that developed into an extreme version; some say he has a disorder. It is no surprise that he might have developed this way; the United States seems to be full such people. Rush Limbaugh and Barack Obama may have at least one thing in common;  they were trained to be narcissistic. Society sets us all up to need to appear special so we can sell our labor. We have all become products in a package. We are encouraged to be grandiose by constant testing and resume-building. The most susceptible of us end up preoccupied with what we should be and perpetually critical or depressed about what we are. Narcissists are terrified of insufficiency, shame, weakness, or inferiority. That resembles the country’s political debate and foreign policy.

Shame is the big motivator for the narcissist — and shame is hard to look at and harder to overcome. Shame is being seen as bad or wrong.  I understand how it can get a grip on one’s heart. For instance, I recently wrote a blog piece that criticized the way my leaders in the BIC were communicating about the crisis in our leadership. I received a scathing letter from one of the general church leaders and it set off a flood of emotion in me. They were trying to shame me, and it almost caused me to stop telling the truth in order to avoid the feeling. Narcissists have a whole collection of ways they defend against shame and the envy they feel of others who seem not to feel it. Here are a few examples:

  • They devalue. They will scorn or ridicule what they envy, or think  they are unworthy of. Watch an episode of Seinfeld.
  • The other side of devaluing is idealization. They have a grandiose sense of self. They don’t merely compare themselves to others; they compare themselves to the best person in their profession and feel horrible in comparison. They need to go to the best school. They know what the best beer is, or can list the top ten microbreweries in the Philadelphia region. They need to wear the best shoes. They read the magazines that reveal the most rigorous workout to achieve the best abs.
  • They end up perfectionistic, which can result in either thinking they have made it or feeling inherently flawed. They have a tough time being forgivably human. They might attach themselves to an idealized, perfect mentor or mate and gain status by being an appendage. But they might also knock them off their pedestal in fury when they prove to be imperfect.

The men’s retreat was full of wonderful stories about growth and pain and Jesus. I told parts of my story of transformation, as well. I said that my story had a wonderful factor in it. I may see my parents as having “whacked” the best parts of me whenever they surfaced like they were playing whack-a-mole. But in my hole I found Jesus. When I was a teen, and all my narcissistic props got knocked out from under me, I remembered Jesus in the deep hole of my depression.

Telling my story was predictably difficult for me. Our whole society is dedicated to flooding the world with idealized stories that create a reality that devalues authenticity. It is hard to figure out whether one is telling a story that is true or “truthy.” We are trained for inauthenticity by watching “reality” shows that have very little to do with reality. As a result, many of us are hesitant to tell a story about ourselves because the best we can do is not be as inauthentic as someone else. When our church decided to call out 100 stories of transformation this year, I don’t think we realized how hard that might seem to people.

Because of the confusing atmosphere in which we live, we are hesitant to ask people to tell their stories. We are hesitant, so why wouldn’t they be hesitant?

  • We are afraid we might turn them into commodities. The 24-hour news cycle is out filming us all the time to provide feed for their image business. Facebook needs all our images and personal history giving to survive. We don’t want to do that to people.
  • So we are afraid that asking someone to tell a story will be exploitive. We’re like a primitive person somewhere who doesn’t want her picture taken because she thinks the camera will steal her spirit. We don’t want to steal others’ spirits.
  • We are afraid that people will feel like they are selling themselves, providing material for a Christian hype machine. The last thing we want to look like is a hype machine!

We try to do things that are “not-unChristian” to be a Christian. We focus on not doing what we are ashamed of, or what embarrasses us in others, or what we envy in others but think will look cheesy when we do it. So it is hard to tell a story about what Jesus is doing and hard to ask someone to do it.

Nevertheless, I think we need to keep trying to tell our stories. The powers that be would like to shut us up. The men at the retreat went into the night not shutting up last Saturday. I think it made a difference.

  • Storytelling helps us to understand who we are and listening to stories gives the gift of understanding to someone else. Vulnerable dialogue is fundamental to love.
  • Our stories are valuable. Even if we don’t really know what we are talking about right now, God thinks our story is valuable because we are valuable to him. We are the creatures he died for, for whom he made a covenant in blood to give us his life. If we receive that gift we are each a vessel in which the Holy Spirit is carried and from which the glory of God is dispensed in this time.
  • Telling our stories is an act of defiance against the powers that sell stories, who want us to be a mere images of some idealized self that is not a gift of God but just a contract with the economy.

Jesus is made known in the human story that acknowledges God with us and that story is continuing to be told in us.

Understanding, restoration, and resistance are in the storytelling. The dialogue is a process of losing one’s false self and taking on one’s true self in Christ.

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Keep Talking about How Your Mate Is Doing with Jesus

Building community, Marriage and Family, , ,

The biggest impediment to keeping faith with Jesus might be a good man or a good woman — or at least a man or a woman who wants me.

I have often wondered out loud how long it will be before a new follower of Jesus is derailed by a new unbelieving boyfriend or girlfriend. Sometimes it seems like such a person is sent to the newly-faithful to see how faithful they want to be!

Almost everybody wants to love. The newly faithful are good to love. It is ironic that just as they start accessing a deeper way to love, the very thing that faith unleashes is the very thing that can do faith in! Jesus saves a needy person, brings them into community; they get stabilized and processed a bit, and they immediately use their newly softened heart to connect to someone who disconnects them from Jesus! Or if the person is OK with Jesus, in the abstract (in the, “It’s so cute that you are a Christian,” kind of way), they disconnect their sweet believer from the community and mission that is not that cute. This is a significant struggle right now all over our network.

Figuring out how faithful people mate has been a struggle from the beginning. Paul, in particular, talks about it quite a bit in the Bible. He really gets into the subject with the church in Corinth, Greece. He has a lot to say in his letters to his dear friends about how they are relating, and we have been pondering his revelations ever since. This is the group to whom he writes the famous 1 Corinthians 13 about love. This is the part of that chapter which is often excerpted for weddings:  

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

When Jesus frees a person to love like this, they are a very attractive mate! Many people are glad to receive the Jesus-like love of a Jesus follower as long as the lover doesn’t bring Jesus along with His love. And many people who love like Jesus are very hesitant to unhook from a person who doesn’t like Jesus precisely because they have learned to hope and persevere in love like Jesus!

Yoked with your mate

Maybe that is why Paul wrote again in 2 Corinthians 6 about being overly involved with people who are not involved with Jesus. He says not to get “yoked together” with unbelievers, like mismatched farm animals trying to get some plowing done. Animals that are yoked conform to each other’s ways or they constantly chafe under the yoke. When it comes to followers of Jesus connecting with people following something else, it can be a bad situation for both parties. When a Christian is intimate with an unbeliever, it is like inviting someone to defile the “temple of the living God,” Paul teaches, since the Spirit of God resides in His people. Paul is not saying that an unbeliever is all bad or that he or she can’t be loved and redeemed. He’s saying that they don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into, and they should not be lured into taking it lightly. Likewise, the believer should not try to hide their light so an unbeliever is comfortable in their dark, as if that were possible, anyway. It is not good for either party. Something has to live or something has to die.

Paul has a long discussion about what to do about these situations in 1 Corinthians 7.  The message of Jesus has come to Corinth and there are quite a few marriages and engagements among the new believers that have been impacted, so Paul wants to talk about what to do with your mate. His main advice is that if a person can manage to not get entangled in sex and marriage at all, that’s a good thing. But I don’t think he really thinks that is going to happen for 95% of the people, so he tries to help sort things out. He says that people who are married when they come to faith should stay married. Don’t desert your mate just because they don’t come to faith. But if they leave you, don’t feel bound to them; let yourself move on. To people who aren’t married when they come to faith he says it would be just as well to stay unmarried, because if you get intimate with someone, they are going to hold sway over you – heart, mind and body; who they are is going to make a big difference in who you can be. So if you need to get married (and that is a good thing), make sure that Jesus can live with the person you marry. It is better to stay single than to be yoked to someone who is uncomfortable being yoked to Jesus.

Like Paul feels the need to talk to his loved ones about the specifics of making love relationships, about marriage, and about how they are having sex, we need to keep talking, too. The love of God poured out on us in Jesus is making us whole and setting us free to be our true selves. It is also making us very attractive to people who need our love, and many of them have no clue about the bondage they are in and the false selves to which they are committed. We need to be honest with ourselves about the limits of who we are in Jesus. We need to be honest with our lovers about what relating to us really means. We’re going to love them; that is what we do. But so is Jesus, and they need to let him be in the relationship, since He’s not going anywhere.

Five Reasons Holy Week Might Be Hard For Us

A life in the Spirit, ,

Walking with Jesus will be hard this week. It is hard to walk Spirit to spirit every day, but this week is the “discipline week” that often brings up everything that makes it hard to walk with Jesus every day. You may not think Holy Week is going to be hard, but I, and most others I think, will be struggling a bit.

At a conference full of evangelicals last week the worship leader started out a plenary session with “At the Cross” (an example sung robustly here). It reminded me of my childhood experience of Christianity. I can’t really defend our skeptical reaction, but my sister and I always lampooned this song when we sang it (robustly!) in the front row of the Baptist Church. We were tickled because of this line, “At the cross…it was there by faith I received my sight and now I am happy all the day.” Even then, we knew that most of the people in the room were not happy all the day and that the song made promises it wasn’t keeping.

What I mean is that the story of “At the Cross” should have stuck with Jesus and not included somewhat narcissistic declarations of how happy Jesus has made his followers as evidence that his work has efficacy. The burden of sin has rolled away, but I am still rising from my tomb. Dying is still easy and living is still hard. Everyone who knows me, especially my intimates, can tell you that I am generally a happy-all-the-day kind of guy who still shoots himself in the foot all the time. I will be happy to limp through Holy Week, following after Jesus, who saved me and is saving me, with whom I am suffering as he is suffering with me. That’s harder and better than pretending “it’s all good.”

We offer a Holy Week observance that is harder and better and I think that is good. I need it.

Now, I am not writing this to make non-participants feel stupid or bad. The school district has made this week a vacation and some people will take advantage of that and miss the whole thing. Some people work at night, when we are holding our meetings, and there are not that many jobs to be had. Plenty of people have not figured out how to have spiritual disciplines that actually help them connect to God and aren’t merely more things to do; they don’t need more obligation. So don’t take this the wrong way.

Jesus in the Temple. We follow him on Monday of Holy Week.

I am just writing to you in the spirit of Jesus, who tells people to follow him even when they make a lot of good excuses why they can’t do it. He meets people who are honest enough to admit that it is hard to follow him, and Jesus is honest enough to tell them that he knows it is hard and they have to do it anyway. We need to die, too, in order to live. Paul says he wants to share the Lord’s death so he will share the Lord’s life. Our audacious determination to follow Jesus through his last week, in whatever way we can, hopefully using the community’s observances, is the kind of focus serious disciples keep. I think it is life-giving.

Five reasons that it will be hard. That’s OK:

1) You might be called in to work or have classes. There are very few people in power and probably no corporations or universities who will recognize your obligation to follow Jesus through his last week, especially if it costs them any of your time or devotion. They are against such divided loyalty to their money. They will make it hard. The younger you are the harder it will be because the unemployment rate for the young is something like 14-20% according to Sunday’s Inquirer. Holy Week calls for focus on the master, so it brings up the other masters on whom we are called to focus.

2) We will have to work on it. Having devotion that calls for scheduling outside our “ruts” for an entire week is work. That’s why we do it. Some people honestly love the whole thing and not only look forward to Lent but also Holy Week all year. Most people don’t. Most people think good things happen to them, or not; they don’t feel like one should work for them. Their marriages disappoint them as soon as they are “work,” so do their churches, jobs, whatever. Holy Week breeds agency – a sense that we have value, that we make a difference when we show up, that doing something can build something.

3) We will do it together. The way we observe Holy Week, a lot of the process is communal, not just individual. That makes it even more inconvenient and even more subject to being messy and inept. New leaders will lead the meetings and they may be great or awful. We’ll have to deal with that. Jesus, after all, is visibly making himself subject to humankind throughout the week. We need to do that too — we’re even going to follow him as he carries his cross through our neighborhoods and experience what it is like to be observed by the neighbors! Being spiritual as people among other people is one of our greatest challenges. Holy Week breeds humility and patience.

4) The whole idea requires surrender. First, it requires surrender to love. Like David Benner says: “It is possible to know God’s love personally, beyond simply knowing about it. The fact that I am deeply loved by God is increasingly the core of my identity, what I know about myself with most confidence. Such a conviction is, I am convinced, the foundation of any significant Christian spiritual growth.” Living in that love means surrender of time, surrender of attention to other things, other pursuits, maybe even surrender of wages or visits with important people, or pleasure.  Holy Week breeds waiting expectantly for the fullness of love.

5) It is all about Jesus. That makes it hard, in itself. Holy Week makes it plain that following Jesus is not an ideology one can hold in one’s brain, it is an embodied faith that happens in real time. Jesus did not die in the abstract; he died in time and space. We are called to die daily, too. During Holy Week we enact faith that is about our whole lives. Being deeply involved in doing something that is all about Jesus, that is devoted to relating to Jesus and being like Jesus, that even leads us to be public about following is hard and very good for us. Holy Week nurtures a character that can be a true self day by day.

Focusing on the master, showing up because what we do makes difference, developing humility and patience in community, learning to wait expectantly, nurturing a character that reflects our true selves – all those are good reasons to do something hard. I am trying to talk myself into it. Jesus already came to town last night. I don’t want to miss the whole thing for the nothing I somehow consider more important.

I Don’t Want to Zone Out During Holy Week.

A life in the Spirit, Mostly the arts, ,

Last night I talked about my favorite new painter, William Brassey Hole. I am not sure he is the most spectacular painter. But the scenes he paints are the most spectacular ever.

The one on which we were meditating last night is the one called, in short, “Jesus about to heal a boy.” It is one of Hole’s “on the spot” imaginations of what it must have been like to be part of the scene when Jesus descended from the experience of transfiguration on the mountain and entered into a village in which a boy was tormented by an evil spirit.

There is a lot to say about what Mark reveals about that moment in history. But the part of the painting that sticks with me is the man in the foreground zoning out. He is reminding me too much of myself. I can’t help but pay attention to him as we get near Holy Week.

Zoning out in the middle of importance

A few people reading this probably just said, “What is Holy Week?” Wikipedia does not really do it justice. Circle of Hope tries to get into it deep. We spend the whole week walking with Jesus through his last days, in a symbolic way, mainly through our nightly meetings that listen to the scripture and replicate it in some significant way. Our Holy Week observance is intentionally “over the top.” It stakes a claim to our attention and time in a world that would love to shuffle Jesus off into “private time,” which none of us has much of anyway. Holy Week insists that we plan around it, we change our schedule, we do something so Christian that our acquaintances will find out about it and we will have to explain ourselves; it honors Jesus going to the cross, which is still the scandalous basis for our faith. I love it.

That is, I love it theoretically. It is certainly the right thing to do. I am proud to have it in my schedule. I think I should honor Jesus. But I am still way too much like that guy in the painting looking “wherever.”

The most important thing that will ever happen in his village is about to happen and he is looking somewhere else. I can’t quite interpret what he is thinking.

  • He could just be blanked out, like people on the subway waiting for the train to stop, sleepwalking.
  • He could be lost in his own thoughts, slightly depressed; a screaming boy can’t even get his attention.
  • He might be worried, looking up the hill to see if anyone is watching this, like his wife maybe, who wishes they would move out of his terrible village into her father’s village, where there are no seizure-ridden boys.
  • He might be wondering if that dog wandering up there is his dog that got untied and is chasing the neighbor’s chicken.

For whatever reason, his attention is wandering away from Jesus coming to his village and the miracle that is about to happen. I might do that with Holy week.

A lot of my friends will ignore the discipline of Holy Week because they think they carry Jesus with them in their heart, exclusively, like they are the vehicle for his existence. They don’t live in Jesus, Jesus lives in them; and whatever they do, Jesus is privileged to bless. If they let Him out of the cage of their heart, he should feel grateful.

Privileged to follow

I never quite got that Christianity, even though it has been popular for decades. I still feel like I am privileged to follow Jesus around. I expect to be surprised at how he is going to show up. I spend a lot of effort tuning my receptors, so I am ready for him. I am welcomed into his universe, restored to my place in it. I am watching for what my king desires.

So I don’t want to zone out during Holy Week. Yes, it is arbitrary to have a holy week, and no, Jesus is not restricted to showing up during it. Yes, most of it was invented by Catholics, and no, it is not a magical vortex of some kind. Yes, there are a lot of arguments for why one should go to class or wherever instead of the observances, but they are mostly bogus reasons, imho. I think the week will be especially helpful in fulfilling my desire to zone in on Jesus, so I don’t just zone out about stuff that is threatening to overwhelm me.

It is tempting every year for me to tamp down the meaning and emotion of Holy Week, to look away, to let it happen without me while my mind is occupied elsewhere or my mind is occupied with resisting being occupied. I am way too much like that man in the painting. Jesus is going to the cross and I…

  • could be preoccupied with my relationship problems.
  • could wonder if the observances are worth the effort to attend. Some people would think it was radical to ask their boss for time off from noon to three on Good Friday because they aren’t going to work while Jesus is on the cross doing his work. And it is true, some people in charge of the observances might not be all that adept.
  • could be distracted by how weird it is to be a Christian who is so serious. Every day!?
  • could just stay distant. I might go to every meeting and manage to never concentrate on what they mean, or on the Lord’s presence in  the moment, or on my own heart’s struggle.

Those are just a few of my issues.

How are you working with the opportunity?

I think it is the most important week of the year. It is the week that should color all the other weeks. If the year is going to be Christian, it should be like Jesus is coming to heal a boy in our own village, not like a passing thought trying to get into my preoccupied mind.

Ravi and Clementi — Let’s watch out for one another.

A life in the Spirit, , , , , , , ,

Poor Dharun Ravi and poor Tyler Clementi! It is like evil swooped in to their dorm room and carried them both away.

In case you have not been following this tragic case that has been played out in the press for over a year, Ravi found out how to use his webcam remotely and spied on his roommate having an intimate encounter with another man. Days later Clementi told his FB friends he was jumping off the George Washington Bridge with a few words and, “Sorry.” He never read the text Ravi had sent him asking for friendship. The jury found that Ravi’s intentions were not to intimidate, but the impact of his actions did intimidate, just the same, and convicted him on fifteen counts. [Get the whole story in the New Yorker]

Let’s watch out for one another.

1) Even though the TV has shown people being watched on camera to see what funny things they might do for your entire life, it is still not right.

Even though there is a TV show (Person of Interest) that makes a point of noting how we have a camera watching us constantly, their point is that such an invasion of privacy is horrible, not inevitable. Let’s not take pictures of people if they don’t want us to. And let’s never post them without their consent, especially to make fun of them.

2) Everyone is probably more fragile than we know.

Clementi instant-messaged a friend “[I]ts not like he left the cam on or recorded anything. He just like took a five sec peep lol.” But then, after a second encounter with his older sexual partner (after draping Ravi’s camera and preventing another peep), he jumped from a bridge. We’ll never know if he was bullied into it, or if he had other significant problems that no one will ever know. Let’s take one another seriously. Humor is good when it is based in joy and mutual acceptance; heartbreaking when it is based on contempt.

3) The younger we are the more we seem liable to research someone rather than get to know them.

Ravi had a lot of information on his roommate before he moved in to Rutgers with him. He had already researched him and discussed his research with his friends. It did not make for an intimate relationship. Granted, 18 year old men are not known for creating a lot of intimacy, but treating people like they are things is deadly. Let’s be careful with Google, Facebook and all the other ways we impersonally collect data on each other. Loves covers people with grace.

4) We are all having struggles with sex.

Poor Tyler Clementi sounds like he was being as brave as he could be with his struggle. He had a tearful discussion with his parents about his same-sex attraction. He was acting in a risky way by commandeering his room for the night for sex. What hasn’t been widely talked about is that he was part of a church youth group before he went to college. The general repression Christians have in regard to sex may have made his explorations even more difficult. Let’s remember some of the things we think about sex. It is not just a personal expression; it is about partnering and it happens in a context full of relationships. It is almost never kept private. Like everything, it relates to God.

5) We need to keep clear of the authorities.

Not only are they watching us, citizens can be killed abroad [link]; the government has given the go-ahead to fly remotely-controlled drones in our airspace [link]; Dharun Ravi was convicted of fifteen charges of spying for watching a three-minute kiss and unsuccessfully trying to do it again. He didn’t even know it was wrong. He didn’t take a plea bargain because he didn’t think he could be convicted. He underestimated the power of Lambda Legal and other enraged advocacy groups that tend to fuel litigation. I think he also underestimated the reality of being a brown person from India in the United States [comments from India in The Hindu]. I imagine I underestimate just how much trouble I could get into by writing this blog post. In Ravi’s trial they put up instant-messaging trails and chat streams on the screen to validate some point of law they were making. Many of us have not forgotten how our unstable but well-connected neighbor on Tenth St. managed to get us under a five-year injunction for making too much noise when we worshipped. There is not a lot of justice out there, even though there is a lot of money spent on procuring it. Quoting one of Clementi’s favorite musicals, “May God bless and keep the Tsar (Russian for Caesar) far away from us!”

During Lent, if we are with Jesus in the wilderness and not just trying to cram Jesus into our wilderness, we can notice evil better.

Just like Jesus was confronted with the destructive delusions of evil and tempted to join in, we can notice how we are being tempted ourselves. It looks like the poor young men of Rutgers had too few resources to deal with what they were handed, even when society handed it to them with the full expectation that they could, and then came down on them with full social and legal ramifications when they couldn’t. They needed a Savior, and so do we.